A system and method are disclosed for management of ground operation of an aircraft. Specifically, disclosed techniques are related to collision avoidance, cost effective energy management, and fleet management of aircrafts during ground operation.
During taxiing around an airport, collisions may occur between an aircraft and other ground objects such as gate, service vehicles or other aircrafts. According to one estimate, the ground damage to the world's airliners is nearly about $4 billion every year. For corporate fleets, the damage was estimated to be $1 billion annually. The ground damage include direct costs resulting from material and work related to an accident, and indirect costs resulting from aircraft being not in operation, harming the public image of airliner, and incident investigations. The main causes of surface accidents identified from the historical database include the failure to maintain adequate visual lookout, the failure to perceive distance between the wings and obstacles, and the failure to maintain required clearance.
To avoid collisions, cockpit viewing units are assembled in the aircraft so that the crew members have knowledge of their environment. The cockpit viewing units receive surveillance and monitoring information through a broadcast and present it to the crew in a suitable format. Availability of such information allows the crew to remain vigilant and reduce the collision incidents in the airport. However, in many situations, the assessment about separation of the aircraft with fuselage of another aircraft or a ground vehicle or an object lacks finer details. Attempts to maneuver of aircrafts based on such an assessment may lead to collisions.
Management of a fleet of aircrafts in an airport requires additional information about crowding of aircrafts on runways, and status of other moving vehicles. Optimizing the movement of the fleet of aircrafts with varying arrival, and departure times requires ability to monitor and control relative motion of various vehicles operating from the airport. Movement of aircrafts during ground operation using aircraft engine has many disadvantages. Aircraft engine operation requires high quality costly fuel. The dust and debris on the ground may be sucked by the aircraft engine during taxiing and the aircraft engine may be damaged.
Aircraft power requirements such as cabin lighting, and air-conditioning are provided by operating air craft engine or by auxiliary power sources on the aircraft. Conventional methods of supporting auxiliary loads of the aircraft are costly, and not elegant from environmental considerations. Proposals for providing alternate power sources to meet power requirement for the aircraft are available but these proposals may not be optimal when the aircraft is stationary and during taxiing.
Improved techniques for management of ground operation of a fleet of aircrafts, viz., collision avoidance of aircrafts, traffic management of the fleet of aircrafts, and power management of aircrafts, are required.